Sheeps In The Night'
by Wynja2007
Summary: Strictly Movie!verse, but that wasn't one of the categories. This story was third in the Teitho Challenge: Out of Place Summary: After the Battle of the Five Armies, Legolas tells his father the king he can't go home...


Legolas turned away from his father with a nod and went in search of his horse. His way led him past dreadful sights; dead orcs and wargs, fallen men, dwarves, elves.

So many elves...

He tried not to look too closely or he knew he would see faces he recognised, friends whose deaths he would feel like knives in his heart. It was already too much to bear; it felt as if one more thing, one more sorrow were to find him, he would shatter beneath the weight of it.

How much worse for his father, who had not wanted to put his people at risk in the first place?

This was become a terrible place.

A sigh filled him. 'I cannot go back,' he'd said, and had seen Thranduil pause, waver between father and king. King had won, and instead of a request, however veiled, however hidden, to stay, there were instructions, orders. At least the parting had not been harsh, his last words as close to a blessing as could be expected from a father who had lost so much.

He should have been glad, he supposed, that at least he had been given a purpose: Go north. Seek the Dúnedain, look for one called Strider.

He found his horse and set off north.

He camped for the night in a bleak, open wilderness that was more alien to him than anything he had ever experienced before. No sheltering trees overhead, masking the hugeness of the sky. Beneath the glitter of the stars he felt lost, insignificant, and despair laid cold hands around his heart.

Tired – emotionally drained, rather than physically weary, although he should have been exhausted – he tried for reverie, but the sky was too big, the landscape too open.

So a strange, jangling, clattering sound at the edge of hearing was at once both alarming and, since it wasn't at all the sound spiders or wargs or orcs generally produced, a welcome interruption to his sombre frame of mind.

Rising to his feet, he readied his bow and held an arrow loosely in place, prepared for a quick shot if necessary. Already across the plain he could see something advancing towards him; a fast, low, and rather improbable conveyance towed by what looked like a dozen or more rabbits. He re-quivered his arrow and found a rueful smile starting on his face as an odd grass sledge bumped and skipped nearer until, eventually, the rabbits came to a tumbled halt and began to graze the rough grass.

'Hello, youngling!'

A bundle of rags on the conveyance began to move, unfold, and Legolas found himself looking at Radagast the Brown.

'Aiwendil, greetings,' Legolas said.

'Oh, it's a long time since anyone bothered calling me that...' Radagast said, peering into his robes. 'You can come out now, little ones... off you go and forage, but be careful!'

While Legolas shook his head, a scuffling of tiny feet and a family of field mice appeared from around Radagast's person.

'Ah, that's better... that is better!' Radagast said. 'Dear little fellows, but they do tickle... Now, let me see...'

Legolas waited while Radagast stared off into some distance, gathering his scattered thoughts.

Legolas waited longer.

Finally, he tried a gentle prompt.

'Did you have a reason for being here, Aiwendil?'

'Radagast, please... let's not go all Quenya, now... Good question... yes, I did... I was sent to... to... Oh, it's you, Legolas! What a coincidence!'

'Is it so?'

'Yes... your father sent me to look for you...'

'Why would he do that?'

Radagast stomped his feet and rubbed his hands together.

'It's a bit cold, don't you think? How about a bit of a camp fire?' he suggested. 'Not for me but for my little friends in the hair, here? Then once we're settled, I'll tell you all about it.'

Legolas had noticed the nest, of course, but it had seemed impolite to mention it. Or the trail of debris glued to the side of Radagast's face, clumped in his hair. What was most odd was that, covered as the wizard was with all manner of unpleasant accretions, he did not, actually, stink. Yes, there was a certain fragrance; a scent of the woods and the underbrush after rain and damp, perhaps, but it was not unpleasant. In fact, for one used to the aromas of the forest, it was almost comforting, a reminder of the trees around Legolas' home.

So he nodded and kindled a fire and shared his lembas with the wizard – and his assorted tenants – waiting patiently for Radagast to remember what he had been going to say.

'There, everything's better with a nice camp fire, isn't it? Making the dangerous feel safe. It's easy to be afraid under the bigness of it all... you're feeling it, aren't you, my lad?'

'Perhaps. I am not... where I expected to be, and I am going somewhere I never expected to be sent...'

'That's true enough,' Radagast said with a snort. 'Given what your father said he'd told you to do...'

'Go north. Find the son of Arathorn, who is called Strider...'

'Exactly. Your Ada was having one his moments, I'm afraid... you know...'

'I am not sure I do...'

'Prescient moments... Elrond has them, Galadriel... Galadriel was a slave to them until she put most her foresight into that mirror of hers... your Ada, less often. So when he does, he sometimes gets a bit... muddled with the timings.'

'My father? Muddled?'

'Oh, you'd be surprised, happens to me all the time... anyway, where were we?'

'My father's prescient moments.'

'Oh, do you know about those, then?'

Legolas found himself on the verge of a smile. Radagast ought to have been annoying, frustrating, but instead, Legolas found himself feeling drawn to the gentle eccentricity of the wizard.

'You were saying there might be a problem with my carrying out Adar's orders?'

'Funny, so was I... yes... This Strider, you see. No such person.'

'No?'

'Well, not yet. That's what he said...'

'And he told you this?'

'He'd no choice, really; I found him in the middle of realising he'd sent you off on a wild goose chase... the fellow will be called Strider, one day... but not yet. Arathorn's son is still just a child in human terms. After Arathorn died, the poor little lad was sent to be fostered by Elrond in Rivendell...'

'Rivendell!'

'Yes... And there's your second problem, do you see?' Radagast sucked his teeth thoughtfully. 'Either your Ada's bought one of those cheap compasses from a travelling tinker or else Elrond's being economical with the truth again...'

'What?'

'Did not you know? Whenever someone Elrond doesn't like suggests a visit, he says, of course, always happy to see a friendly face... we're up in the north, by the way, you can't miss us... but if you find yourselves on the far side of the Wasted Heath, you've gone too far north...'

'Really? But Lord Elrond has a reputation for hospitality...'

'Yes... by those who manage to find the place...' Radagast broke off a crumb of lembas and fed it to his sparrows. 'Then again, if you try to get to Rivendell by going north, the boy probably will be all grown up by the time you find him... West. You need to go west from here to get to Imladris. And if you'd realised, you could have travelled with Gandalf and his hobbit friend... come to think of it, perhaps Thranduil wouldn't have liked that, no...'

'I see... I think. Thank you. But Adar said nothing about Imladris, or Elrond...'

Legolas hid a sigh. What was he supposed to do now? His father's instructions seemed pointless, make-work, intended simply to give Legolas a purpose, a reason to be out of the kingdom to save face, perhaps.

'I don't know what to do,' he whispered into the fire.

'You can still follow most of your father's instructions,' Radagast said. 'Get yourself west of the mountains and make yourself known to the Dúnedain who are living in and around the valleys outside Elrond's borders... you don't have to go to Rivendell unless you want to, that way. Or you can come with me, if you like.'

'I cannot go home... and yet I do not belong out here, under the wide skies... I do not belong anywhere...'

'Oh, I know that feeling,' Radagast said. 'But that's because you're missing the point. Listen. And then look out over the plains.'

Legolas stilled himself, allowed his senses to sharpen. With his eyes closed to cut out other stimuli, he could occasionally hear a distant bleating, echoed by another, almost a question and response. Looking out towards the sounds, even in the darkness he could see tiny shapes of sheep, not all clustered together, but near enough to each other to be aware of other animals of the flock nearby.

'You and I, Legolas,' Radagast began. 'We are like those creatures; sheeps in the night, reassured by the presence of other sheeps...'

'Sheep,' Legolas repeated. It was more a correction than a question, but Radagast warmed to his theme.

'Sheeps, indeed, yes... we can be by ourselves, individuals, but knowing there are other individuals out there, too, is comforting. One sheep wanders off, and it's alone, away from the security of the flock. Then it hears one of its fellows bleating, and it feels safer. Well, hope that helps.'

To Legolas that sounded like a story the wizard told himself when he felt lonely and lost and utterly out of place; how it related to his own sense of displacement he had no idea.

'But you are a wizard, one of the Maiar – of course you feel out of place... properly speaking, you do not belong in Middle Earth...'

'Oh, silly, silly boy, you really do not understand at all, do you?' Radagast said, his voice kind with pity. 'No, I do not belong in Middle Earth... I belong to it. As do we all, really. Once you realise that, you will never be alone, never out of place. Anyway,' the wizard went on, 'it's getting late and the sparrows are tired. I'm going to bed down with the rabbits. We'll talk more in the morning. Goodnight.'

'Goodnight.'

Legolas felt adrift, cut loose from everything he had ever known and ever loved, and was he to accept this quest to seek a child and wait for him to become a man and take the name of Strider, or was he to follow a different path now?

He thought again about Radagast's theory. Perhaps he was right; perhaps knowing that there were other beings just as lost, just as much sheep – or sheeps – in the night as he was would be helpful.

Distantly came the sound of bleating again, and he looked up at the stars sprinkling the skies. Bright amongst them was Eärendil, bearing the last surviving Silmaril on his brow, steering his ship Vingilot through the night, a symbol of light in the gathering dark. Gil-Estel, humankind had called it, seeing it rise for the first time, 'Star of Hope', a ship in the night...

Reverie found him then, swooping down like swan's wings to cover him with sleep just as a new idea, born out of the sky and the sheep and the Star of Eärendil began to shape in his tired mind.

He woke to find strange lumps of warmth around him, something tickling his face. Focussing his eyes, he saw the soft, whiffly nose of a rabbit so close that its whiskers had swept across his cheek.

'All right, all right, Sylvestris,' Legolas heard Radagast say. 'I think our young friend has woken up, now.'

'I seem to be... your rabbits are lying against me and...'

'Yes. They didn't want you waking up and feeling alone, kind little chaps. Up you get, Legolas! We have a long way to go today.' Radagast smiled. 'Come along. Breakfast, comfort break, and into the sled for me, you up on your horse. Time for me to go home. You're very welcome to come with me, young prince.'

'I need to seek Strider first, I think.'

'If he's who I think he is, he's ten years old. What are you going to do, teach him his letters?'

'Perhaps,' Legolas said with a smile. 'But perhaps I'll teach him something else, instead.'

'What do you have in mind, exactly?'

'Hope,' Legolas said. 'I think I will try to show him that there will always be hope.'


End file.
